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"While there is still little movement and a lot of phonetic monotony among girls, boys' names are more dynamic and more disparate in terms of sound."
Photo: Manu Padilla Photo / imago images / Westend61
In the shutdown times of last year, parents-to-be might have had a little more time to ponder their children's names.
But the decision was often not so surprising: Emilia and Noah were the most common first names for newborns in the past year.
This was announced by the Society for the German Language (GfdS) in Wiesbaden.
Among the girls, Hanna (h) - the most popular name in 2019 - comes in second, followed by Emma and Sophia / Sofia.
In absolute terms, however, the differences are apparently not that great, "as fewer and fewer newborns have a name from the top ten." Accordingly, there is only a difference of 110 newborns between Emilia and Hanna.
With the boys, Noah stayed at the top, followed by Leon and Paul.
The fourth place with Mat (h) eo or Matt (h) eo is rather surprising, who according to GfdS climbed nine places.
"Jumps like this have been rare in recent years," it said.
girl
Emilia
Hannah / Hanna
Emma
Sophia / Sofia
Mia
Lina
Mila
Ella
Lea / Leah
Clara / Klara
Boys
Noah
Leon
Paul
Mat (h) eo / Matt (h) eo
Ben
Elias
Finn
Felix
Henry / Henri
Louis / Luis
"While there is still little movement and a lot of phonetic monotony among girls, boys' names are more dynamic and more disparate in terms of sound," says the GfdS statement.
Subsequent names convey prestige
Since last year, the company has consistently separated between first and second names.
Data from the registry offices show that 35 percent of all children were given multiple names in the past year.
As in previous years, Sophie, Marie and Maria were particularly frequent second or subsequent names for girls, and Alexander, Maximilian and Elias for boys.
According to the GfdS, there is a trend towards assigning subsequent names less and less as a reminder of real ancestors.
Instead, more typical “traditional names” would be given, which generally “convey a certain prestige”.
The GfdS relies on data from more than 700 registry offices with a total of almost one million name entries.
"This recorded almost 90 percent of all names given in Germany in 2020," according to the Society for German Language.
ptz / dpa / AFP
